Hate Has Splendid Memory
by Aine Deande
Summary: Narcissa reminisces. -- We remained throughout, in our desert of dreams, a world of our own never fully realised. -- Blackcest.


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Title: Hate has splendid memory

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Pairing: Bellatrix/Narcissa

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Rating: PG-13 for implication of sexuality.

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Summary: Narcissa reminisces. "We remained throughout, in our desert of dreams, a world of our own never fully realised." Blackcest.

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Hate has splendid memory

Hate has splendid memory. I remember one time, behind the bushes, before the Lake, on top of the towels we'd brought with us from swimming, under the burning weight of the sun... when we were almost discovered. 

In the heat of the moment we hadn't thought twice about casting an Unnoticeable Charm, and thought for sure this would be our undoing. Her breath on my throat, for we hadn't moved since hearing the footsteps, came in little flames. We could hear the voices moving, closer, closer still... then, thankfully, away again. Yet the mood was broken, and we dressed without looking at each other once. And I hated everything in the world right then... except her. 

That hatred came later, much later... A hatred that turned my eyes to shades of grey, my front to frost, my heart to stone. The hatred, transformed from a love that was never consummated, and a desire that was never fully saturated.

We remained throughout, in our desert of dreams, a world of our own never fully realised. 

The fear of the unknown, moreover, the fear of true realisation of the depths of our feelings, of our communal history, and subsequent discovery, held us back from exploring the comfort we found only in each other. Love remembers excellently as well, even just the illusion of. 

I can still feel her skin cracking beneath my knuckles, the way it would yield to my fingertips, how she'd bend to my touch and mouth and tongue. She was light, she was dark: both pure and wicked, like contaminated sunshine. She was exhilarating: a mercury pulse, lightning mood swings, where haughty laughter would be replaced by thoughtful or sullen silence within the timeframe of but a next moment.

Lucius knows little of how much I still think of my sister. All he remembers is the sight of us standing hand-in-hand at the wedding, waiting to be parted by vows made ancient long before our first breath. It was really she who gave me away... though never willingly. I could barely move my fingers afterwards from where she had clutched them so tightly. There was blood under her fingernails from where she'd dug them into her cheeks, watching me pronounce my vows. Lucius remembers only my eyes. Whereas I, ever the stubborn one, remember only hers.

She was my first lover; my only lover before my marriage into the Malfoy family. We dreamed up a little rebellion... rebellion against our skin, our blood, our predestined existence. During one of so many bed-light moments (sleep-deprived, as Bella would recall), she bent to my touch as the moon peeked in. Her lips, oh, they revived: her lips on mine rewrote history, as only our past lay open to our interpretation. 

Predators of the present, only when together did we feel right in our skin.

She took and evoked me, broke and enfolded me, like a goddess high above me yet lowering herself to my standards, my tastes. Her hair, golden; her touch, inferno. Perhaps it was truly I who bent, perhaps truly I who choked. Lowered. Brought down and upraised in almost the same fall, where down is truly up. A reverse vertigo. Who knows. 

She was always a reflection of myself, not just the way that we see each other through mirrors, no, nothing that clean. She was never that clean, or simple. Hers was rather blurred about the edges, enriched and at the same time envagued by the cast glow of my feelings for her over every image, mental or otherwise, that I had of her. Like one sees his or her reflection in rippling water with only moonlight to bear its view. Distorted, yet made pure, and at the same time still vague. 

To this day I'm not sure if I ever truly knew her, or in fact knew her better than anyone else. We grew up together, got caught together, in a tender liquid silverweb of our own making. 

Her eyes would spit fire and stone whenever Lucius came by to visit, leaving in his wake another diamond bracelet, another pearl necklace. I'd snuggle up to her at night and face only her back. I'd whisper into her neck, _take down your walls, sweetheart?_ But she remained unmoved, and the afterlight would flee without one reviving the other. 

On other, less lonely nights she would prowl into my sheets of her own accord and set her teeth into my shoulder. Shivers would ripple through our bodies plunging; falling into loss of selfhood, all seemed right with the world. Illusions tattooed onto flesh there where her Dark Mark would one day be.

So rough, and yet she could also be so tender at times. She'd touch an object as though it might shatter beneath her fingertips. As though she carried within her the touch of destruction. I suppose she did. Bella was always very careful touching things.

We'd be in a room, didn't matter where, full of people and little air, and she'd give me this _look_... definitionless, motiveless. Doubtless. And it wouldn't matter if I didn't talk to her or get near her for the rest of the party, or gathering or wherever we were. 

I knew that if I'd go to the bathroom, or even the hallway, it wouldn't take but a few minutes and she'd be there. And we would steal whatever time we needed and then get back to the social stuff as if nothing had happened. Just two sisters taking a break from life. Life was only real with her.

Her skin made me want to cry. She was so soft under my fingertips... I didn't know anything could be so soft. I loved how her eyes would melt under my touch. She was so strong, so unnaturally strong and independent, yet my touch made her vulnerable. Desire is a powerful aphrodisiac, even — especially — in another person. She desired me and perhaps that made me desire her. We always want what we cannot have.

She hurt me too, with her carelessness and her playful nature... and yet then another time she would be so thoughtful, and spontaneously kind. She'd have said something the other day that hurt me mercilessly, and that would make me hold back the next day as she sought... something. Reassurance, perhaps. I'd be resentful and angry at first. She'd be indifferent and cold. But we always made it up quite nicely in the end.

I remember three times with her most vividly: one is her kissing down my body with her eyes fixed on mine. I looked down at her rather lazily as she turned her attention to my nipple. The very moment her eyes went down to my breast a sort of half-smile appeared on her face. I remember that so strongly.

I hated her. I hated her and I loved her. I didn't know the difference. But I remember her as well as if she were standing before me now. That is why feeling doesn't matter in a world of today. Memory keeps our riches close to us.

Another time I remember was her and me together in the changing rooms at our swimming pool. Another one was _in_ that same swimming pool, with her hand creeping up my thigh. 

The first time, in the changing rooms, is where I'm holding her lightly by the waist with one arm, and idly tracing up her thigh and then her arm and then down her front back to her thigh with my finger. My eyes are on her body, not her face. But I can see, from the corner of my eye, her mouth opening and her eyes sink down a bit. And she slightly arches her neck —

My head is full of her. To this day. Lucius is my husband, the father of my child. I love him as one could only love their husband or wife. But he could never be my sister.

To give an example of her, specifically... she was my first kiss. Soft and moist on the lips. In one of those changing rooms, in fact. Of all the firsts that we shared, I recall that one best.

A day later she told me she didn't want to kiss me with tongue. It should be "a gift for the men we are to marry". That hurt me so. 

Then, the next day, she _tried_ to kiss me using her tongue, and I shoved her away. It took a solid half year before I lured her tongue into my mouth again.

I pushed her away that day because it was all I could do not to break. She had told me not to. I couldn't have her twist the rules. Then where would I be? We tried to keep it a game for too long. Our way of setting the world to our fingertips. We conveniently forgot the other rules. Rules that tell of tenderness and sharing. Of giving and not just taking. But we had never quite learned how.

I loved her dearly, but I never said a word. And I hated her, so fiercely, so vividly, that for the longest time I didn't care. My pain reminded me of her. It was all good.

Yes, we were young. It was a game at first. A play of being grown-up, of falling in love, of being married. It never should have turned into what it became. That it did was our undoing. Our games weren't games at first, that is why they were innocent. As the attraction grew, so did our cleverness at hiding it from each other. We took more and more from each other, taking, giving in to our desires, but still trying to keep it light and unimportant. 

When it _did_ become important, we were already too ingrained in the whole it's-just-a-game protection mechanism that we never came out of it. When life marched in and shook us out of our world of illusions, crashed us from our cocoon and made us participate in the play of real life that had so long been just a game for us, everything we had died with it.

I submitted myself to her as she dominated me. She was the dominant party in our love-making, almost always. But I had control over her. But from that control could have grown something else... love, perhaps. That is what we never bothered to find out.

I loved her as a sister. To this day I believe this. The desire messed us up. And after that came the hatred.

Did I mention yet that she felt hard-soft under my touch? That I loved her endlessly? That, to this day, the mere memory of her name makes my voice break on the second syllable? That the thing I loved most about her, desired above all else, was the fact that she loved and hated and anticipated and marvelled and shuddered and laughed and cried and everything of emotional impact and poignancy the same way I did? And that I envied her her casual acceptance of the world, moved her way through its cobwebs like fish in the water? Naturally, effortlessly. That grace-that-wasn't, that unpronounced self-reliance about her drew me in so that it was all I could do not to turn my life completely, devotedly to her and her alone.

Her eye-lids would drop halfway, turn her eyes into slits and her mouth form an elicited, illicit 'O', wondrously, shyly, slyly. A half-smile at the corners of her lips. Every time I touched her. Every time I traced her, memorised her by touch...

And always comes a point when I can no longer discuss her. Lest I drown myself in the past, this is where I get off. 

My childhood friend and lullaby; my nightmare curse and masturbation fantasy. The dream at the edge of my vision; the sound in the back of my mind. 'O'... how you made things difficult. Closure is an absolution not granted to me; but I can stop the flow of words as readily as one drawing a letter in the sky. 

Just for imagery: make it a B this time.

_FIN_


End file.
